Wednesday, 13 July 2011

JOYCE McKINNEY AND THE CASE OF THE MANACLED MORMON by ANTHONY DELANO ... THE *REAL* EXCLUSIVE.

So, let the fanfares blare, roll out the red carpet, goggle at the stars, wear sun glasses against the pyrotechnics of paparazzi in Sunday best. But it’s time for BeWrite Books to blow its own trumpet, too ... please remember that we beat the high-profile movie moguls by weeks.

Tomorrow (July 15) Academy Award-winning movie maker Errol Morris, who has already premiered his latest super-production, Tabloid, in Toronto and London, is star attraction – at the world-famous Sundance Film Festival ... but his picture still hasn't yet been distributed and released to the general public.

Splashed all over the internet, in TV interviews and the world press this month, Errol gleefully says it’s his favourite and best piece of work to date. It’s red hot news, folks (simply Google for evidence). And maybe, in a year or so, the movie might actually see the projectionist’s light of dark at a cinema near you when Errol’s Hollywood fishing results in an inevitable bite. He’ll doubtless pick up another trophy or three for yet another blockbuster and weep tears of joy all the way to the bank with a few more millions. He'll maybe even get himself another Oscar for his mantlepiece. So far, though, not many folks have actually laid eyes on the film; and they won't even in Sundance. Invitation-only tickets, people. Burly bouncers at the doors.

Why wait?

With sincere apologies to that wonderfully talented and acclaimed gentleman and his dedicated team of movie professionals, intrepid researchers and skilled interviewers (the credits threaten to beat the record set by Ben Hur) BeWrite Books reminds him -- and you -- that we spilled the beans, the whole beans and nothing but the beans when we pipped him at the post with the first international ebook editions of the story that inspired his insightful and intriguing – sometimes shocking, more often hilarious – docudrama … on June 23 (it was my 62nd birthday treat to myself).

Proud, tickled pink and not a little smug, we released – in glorious ebook editions and in cahoots with Revel Barker Publishing – Anthony Delano’s warts-n-all, blow-by-blow insider account of the whole murky and side-splittingly funny shebang: Joyce McKinney and the Case of the Manacled Mormon. It’s also available in paperback from RBP.

US beauty queen Joyce McKinney hit the international headlines in the seventies when, love-struck by a straight-laced Mormon missionary, she – and a devoted minder – stalked him to England, kidnapped him (magic Mormon underpants and all) and manacled him to a bed in a remote country cottage where the magic underpants were immediately confiscated and Joyce had her kinky way with him on a regular basis and he, presumably, thought of Utah and hummed hymns he’d learned by heart from recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

She skipped bail and fled home to America, under one of her many, many exotic aliases on one of her many, many fake passports, before she could be fully tried for what amounted to charges of the abduction and serial rape by a beautiful woman of a helpless, God-fearing man she'd held captive and lashed to a special love bed she’d had shipped over the Atlantic for the occasion.

This was no laughing matter. Just imagine the sheer torture the poor evangelist must have suffered as he lay there, chaps, helpless beneath a ruthless blonde beauty queen!

Great tabloid newspaper fodder was that tale. And, wow, did it hit the headlines big time and long time on both sides of the Shining Big Sea Water! But Joyce herself is just one act in the circus ring. The real stars – both of the book and the so-far largely invisible movie – are the expert trapeze artists, jugglers and lion-tamers; the crafty, cut-throat and amazingly skilled and resourceful journalists who competed around the world, daggers-drawn (until the pubs opened and they were all pals again), to unravel the weirdest tale even the most hard-bitten had encountered. That's why Errol Morris called his movie Tabloid, of course. McKinney was a mere chorus girl to the main act.

Delano’s book (which Morris bought for three hundred bucks as a collector’s piece when the first edition was out of print) tells all in this extended and updated edition ... the tragedy and the travesty, the mystery and the almost unbelievably comic of la crème de la crime.

Joyce is now back in the world news in a big way because of the movie, this book ... and because her true identity was discovered accidentally when she boasted on TV of having a litter of puppies cloned from the severed ear of her dead pet dog. That is one time she wasn't telling fibs and little black lies. Even though she’d assumed yet another alias and changed her appearance to spread the cloning tale, baby-boomers clocked her at a glance.

You can read more about Joyce McKinney and the Case of the Manacled Mormon and the author and read the first chapter and reviews in the bookstore section of the BeWrite Books website HERE.

The ebook can be bought from us or any major online ebook store (but more often than not, cheaper from us). It’s available for reading on PCs and laptops, all dedicated ebook-reading devices like Kindle, Nook, Kobo, Sony, Apple iPad, etc, etc, etc, and also on iPods and smart phones. You can even read about it and buy the ebook through iTunes now. And you can buy it direct from BeWrite Books in all popular digital formats. Paperback from RBP is HERE.

What’s Hack-Lit? Hack-Lit (named as such by no lesser an authority than the mighty Independent ‘serious’ daily newspaper in the UK) is books by ace international journalists with proven mass-appeal to millions of general readers on a daily basis. You see, within the Old School of journos who ain’t dead yet, to be described as a ‘hack’ is praise indeed. If you’re an outsider and use the term, you’ll be punched in the nose and thrown out of the bar on your asterisk. Just as you would if you accused us Old Schoolers as telephone ‘hackers’. Hackers are a different and new species and wouldn’t be admitted to the pub in the first place.

So become an insider with BB/RBP Hack-Lit. And if you’ve not enjoyed that privilege yet, Anthony’s Manacled Mormon is the key card to our members-only club. You’re welcome. But it’s your round. The tab’s $5.95 (or its equivalent in whatever pennies you count in your neck of the woods). Less than half the price of a single cinema ticket when Tabloid eventually comes to the screen … whenever that may be. Maybe $5.95 might buy popcorn for one. It's the price of a decent pint in Fleet Street currency.

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General enquiries to contact@bewrite.netEditorial enquiries to ntmarr@bewrite.netEditorial enquiries to hughtmccracken@bewrite.netPoetry enquiries to bewritepoetry@aol.comTechnical enquiries to tonyszmuk@bewrite.net